Methods on Solving Tough Business Problems

This tool lays out a step-by-step process for addressing tough business issues. It’s designed to work for any problem in any industry. The best outcomes come from project teams composed of experienced members and those who may lack experience, but have great analytical thinking.

Here are the descriptions of each step – and an example.

1. State the problem or issue specifically. Dig deep to find the root of the issue. (See our related tool: ‘Issue Mapping.Discovering a manifestation of a larger and more complex problem will leave you feeling bogged down.

2. Hypothesize an approach and/or a solution. For an illustration, the problem may be the company’s declining sales at the same time, the competitor’s constant steadiness. We don’t know whether it’s a problem with our sales staff or a problem with our product.”In this case, you might feel the urge to hire an outside firm to conduct a survey on how customers view the problem”.

3. Distinguish the premises which relate to the cited solution. In this case, two assumptions would be: ‘We assume our customers can help us pinpoint the source of the problem.And we believe that whatever additional problems we may encounter are within our capacity to resolve.’

4. Do a light analysis of those assumptions before investing a lot of resources. If the proposed solution survives the first round of scrutiny, then subject it to a more rigorous analysis. For instance, you might visit five accounts, afterwards you must evaluate if it’s worth to continue hiring outside firms.

5. Redefine the problems and the solutions based on the insights revealed by the analysis. Afterwards repeat the whole process again and again until you’ve achieve your desired results. In this case, you might discover that your initial analysis reveals that the problem is related to concerns about your overall strategic direction as a company.

6. Reiterate the process (redefining the problem and the solution) until there is agreement that the possible incremental improvement in the solution is no longer worth the incremental cost. For an illustration, your employees might study and compare the effect between two campaigns: Developing a consumer education program and starting out a good image crusade. The conclusion: Despite the high cost of educating consumers, it will have a huge effect on the profitability of the company after a year.

This article was written by the business management consultants at Leading Resources. Helping leaders create high performance organizations.

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